Dysphoria
by DuchessOfDementia
Summary: Luna Lovegood was nineteen when she was married. Neville Longbottom was twenty-one when he decided he didn't care. /Work in Progress./ Rated for Mature Content.


**Hello to all! Sorry for not writing/updating in a spell, I've had a lot of work. I'm taking a distance learning foundations class for Leeds University, so I'll be writing this in British English. For this reason, please do not tell me I misspelled certain words that are simply spelled in the British spelling. Really. Don't.**

**My favourite HP couple has always been Neville and Luna. Here you are.**

x-x-x-x-x-x

Luna Lovegood was nineteen years old when she married Rolf Scamander.

Everyone was shocked; not just because she was so young (only a year out of Hogwarts), but because it was _Luna_. The fact that she had gotten married, and before everyone else, too, was quite the surprise. It was not uncommon for jaws to drop when people heard the news.

Neville Longbottom was two years into his apprenticeship with Professor Sprout when he received the wedding invitation by owl. He did not know what it was, initially—it looked like any regular letter from Luna, addressed and written by hand in her loopy scrawl. He had heard, as everyone else had, of her adventures in rural Asia and South America, and expected a standard "keep-in-touch" letter. Her letters had steadily become more and more impersonal as time went on; where she had first sent him pages and pages of stories about her misadventures and eccentric comments about off-topic things and questions about his wellbeing, lately she would only write a paragraph of two, asking only if he was alright and, in answer to his many questions about how she was doing, and what she was doing, and how she was enjoying her travelling, she would always give the same, encompassing answer: _"It is all perfectly fine."_

So when Neville received her letter, he had, foolishly, been hoping for a lengthy personal letter from her, thinking—wishing—she had had a change of heart and decided to resume more intimate correspondence with him. Luna's letters had once been the brightest part of his week—lately, however, they had only been a source of great disappointment. In spite of himself, Neville could not help but think that perhaps Luna was slowly, purposefully, drifting away from him. He thought of the beautiful eccentric he had once had the extreme pleasure of calling his friend, and the idea of her rejection made him unbearably depressed.

The first line of the letter was addressed _To my Dearest Neville. _Neville's heart had leapt at the endearment, his old, buried infatuation with her rising and sticking in his throat. It was stupid, he knew, to believe that a lovely adventure-seeker like her would ever care for him in such a way (really, it was a miracle she cared for him at all), but Neville's optimism truly knew no bounds. He knew she had planned to return for the summer, only a mere month from then, and had already entertained many afternoons-worth of fantasies where he would finally, _finally_, tell her the truth. He wasn't a child anymore, after all; he was twenty years old, successful in his own right, and more self-confident than he had ever been before.

And so, with lifted spirits, Neville continued to read the handwritten letter, though noting with some sadness that the letter was quite short.

_To my Dearest Neville:_

_While in South America, I have met another magizoologist—Rolf, Rolf Scamander. He's absolutely lovely, and we've been working together for many months. Recently, he has asked me to marry him. I've said yes. _

_We want a summer wedding, back home in England. We've picked July the first as our wedding date. Well, I was the one to suggest it, on account of July the first falling on a day when Nargles are very scarce. They despise heat, you see. _

_I considered sending you the printed note that most of our guests will receive, but I think that you deserve something more personal. You have been a very dear friend to me, and I do not think I could ever even contemplate marriage if you were not there. The wedding will be at Rolf's family's home, in Essex. I will send you another owl in a week's time with the address (since I myself have not yet memorized it)._

_All my Love,_

_Luna_

For a minute, Neville did not feel anything at all. He stood in the greenhouse, with sunlight leaking through the glass and falling all around him, rereading the letter. He saw where her quill had slipped and tugged, and noticed how she had written his name in larger letters than anything else on the parchment. He stared intently, madly, at the heading—_To my Dearest Neville—_and then at the signature: _All my Love, Luna._

It was a lie, he thought fiercely, suddenly feeling his face screw up into what was probably a very ugly expression of emotion. He did _not_ have all of Luna's love. Oh, he had plenty of platonic love, of that he was certain—at least, enough to deserve a _handwritten_ invitation to her wedding. But there was a man, somewhere, who had more of Luna's love than he did. And apparently his name was Rolf Scamander.

She was _nineteen_, Neville though madly, collapsing into his chair and looking past everything in the room. He had always assumed there would be time, time for him to grow closer to her, time for him to tell her the truth, time for _him_ to be the one to eventually ask her to marry him. But he had been wrong. He had waited too long. He should have told her when they were still in school. He shouldn't have let her leave, let her go off on her fabulous adventures, without telling her the truth. How could he have been such a _fool_? Of _course_ she would meet someone else, and of _course_ they would fall in love with her. Luna was that way—difficult to understand and befriend at first, but soon, everything about her became endearing and before you knew what had happened, you were in love with her.

Neville put his face in his hands, feeling terrible pain welling up in his forehead. He had suffered from migraines since his childhood, though they had always been easily alleviated by magic. This, however, did not feel like the kind of pain he could cure by waving his wand. Every part of him felt like it was in terrible pain—his head throbbed, his stomach twisted and rolled, and his throat seemed to be choking him with his own grief. All he could see behind his eyes was Luna, Loony Lovegood, _his_ Luna, marrying a man he had never even met. He supposed that, to anyone else, the situation seemed like something that was to be expected. After all, Luna was beautiful and one-of-a-kind, and he was just..._Neville. _Neville was no one special, no one memorable, no one desirable. He was just _there. _But Luna was his opposite in every way. The only thing they had ever had in common was their lack of popularity; but unlike him, Luna had never seemed to mind it in the least. She was stronger than him, and cleverer than him, and certainly far more beautiful than him. It was only fitting that she would marry someone else, then, right? Because who would ever love Neville Longbottom?

It did no good to be bitter about it, Neville reasoned, sitting up and releasing a long, deep breath. The absolute _last_ thing that he wanted to do was cry at a time like this. He had no right to stake any claim over Luna—they had only ever been friends, nothing more. He had never given any evidence to the contrary, and neither had she. She had every right to marry another man, and as her "very dear friend", Neville supposed he had no choice but to go to her wedding. He might as well see her off, right? He thought about how she might look in a wedding dress, white as an impossibly lovely ghost, and felt grief seize him again. But he could overcome it—he could be strong, for Luna. She had often reminded him of how brave she believed he was, even if he never saw it himself. He supposed he owed it to her to at least _be_ there for her, even if he was only there in body, and not in heart.

He exhaled again before reaching for a piece of parchment. Dipping a nearby quill in ink, he began to write his RSVP.

x-x-x-x-x-x

Rolf Scamander's home was large and grand, made of stone and polished wood. There were fields all around the place, full of bending grasses and wild plants, and Neville thought bitterly about how much Luna would adore a place like this. He could never have given her this, he told himself miserably as he rapped on the huge, wooden front door of the home. A little girl with gold hair tied in violet ribbons opened the creaky door, admitting him inside. He grunted shortly that he was Luna's friend, and the little girl called up the stairs in German. Afterwards, she skipped away, and Neville was vaguely, painfully, reminded of the way that Luna used to skip around Hogwarts in her Oxford shoes and bright blue tights, her radish earrings swinging from her earlobes as she did...

"Neville!"

Neville's head snapped up at the sound of Luna's voice, as soft and high as he remembered it. She stood at the base of the large staircase, and for a moment Neville was confused. Luna's ears were not, for the first time since he'd met her, decorated with radish earrings. Instead, they held small, beautiful diamonds, which were simultaneously lovely and out of place. Her butterbeer cork necklace was absent as well—he thought that she looked strange, with her neck and her collar bare to the world like that. Her hair was still as wavy and silver as he remembered, but it had been tamed, pulled back into a long braid.

"Luna," Neville choked, beside himself. He cleared his throat, straightening up and scrambling to regain his composure. "I figured you would be getting ready for the wedding."

"I was worried you might not come," she said. Somehow, everything Luna said sounded like a pleasant sigh.

"'Course I'd come," Neville said awkwardly. "We're friends."

Perhaps it was his imagination, but Neville thought he saw Luna's smile briefly falter.

"I should be going," Luna said, gesturing skyward, referring to the upstairs of the house where her bridesmaids were no doubt panicking over her absence. "Rolf's mother will have a fit if I delay the wedding."

"Right," Neville said gruffly, nodding. His eyes darted away, suddenly finding the stonework of the fore quite interesting.

He could hear Luna turn to leave, when abruptly he saw the flip of her silver hair in his peripheral and knew she had turned back around.

"Oh and Neville..."

Like a whipped dog, his eyes immediately snapped back to her face. Inwardly, he wanted to slap himself—how foolish he was, letting her see him so eager. She was getting _married_, for Merlin's sake. If he wasn't careful, someone might notice that Neville Longbottom was always a little _too_ attentive to Rolf Scamander's bride, always hanging onto her words a little _too_ much. Neville briefly considered the outcome if Luna herself noticed this, and he felt his ears turn hot as he imagined her painful rejection.

But Luna only smiled at him. It was not wide and careless, like the smiles he always remembered her giving; this smile was small and guarded, a private smile.

"You've changed, you know. In a good way. You look...very nice."

She turned and bounded back up the stairs before he could sputter out his awkward thanks. In spite of himself, he felt overwhelmed with infatuation and flattery, like a schoolboy who had just learned that the prettiest girl in his year thought he was cute.

Once she was gone, Neville was at a loss of what to do. He decided to make his way around the house and search for the other guests. He could hear their raucous laughter coming from somewhere in the house, so they must be around there somewhere...

He found himself admiring the dozens and dozens of photographs that lined the walls of the Scamander house. Everywhere he looked, proud parents and serene grandparents and boisterous children smiled back at him. He felt his heart sink as he examined one photograph in particular, one in which an elegant young woman and her angular-faced husband were surrounded by six children. The children laughed shrilly and tugged at one another's hair and shirtsleeves while the mother giggled and the father shook his head, grinning. This, Neville thought, looking from one picture to another in the old house, was what Neville could not give her. He could not give her family, or a home. His Gran had died only a few months ago, and he had no family left. Sure, he had inherited her money, but he still only lived at Hogwarts in his small, dim quarters, spending his days examining plants and doing the paperwork that Professor Sprout did not want to do.

Luna was a warm, friendly person—she would not like a life like that. She would want a house, and siblings, and nieces and nephews. She would hate any life Neville could scrap together for her. Being in this house only provided further proof to the fact that Neville was not, and could never have been, the man Luna was meant to love. And yet, his heart still pounded rebelliously against the idea.

x-x-x-x-x

Nearly a year after their wedding, Neville could still not forget the terrible pain of that day. He was miserable to discover that in addition to being exciting, wealthy, and having a massive family, Rolf Scamander was every bit as beautiful as Luna. He had bright green eyes and gold hair, and features that reminded Neville of the Muggle actors whose blown-up faces were displayed on film posters all over London. Neville was surprised by the overall normality of the wedding—Luna's dress had been pretty, but uncharacteristically plain, falling straight down and revealing her pearly shoulders. The wedding itself had been nothing extraordinary, unless you considered two unbelievably pretty people wedding one another extraordinary. On the off chance when Neville used to dream about himself marrying Luna, he always pictured her wearing one of the bizarre dresses she so loved, and probably not even wearing white at all—he had expected she would wear something bright and unusual, like yellow or perhaps blue, to match her eyes. He had pictured her beaming, as well, and with her hair loose and lovely around her. But instead, Luna's hair had been pulled back into a tight, complicated-looking braid, and the most she had done during the ceremony was crack a shy smile.

Neville expected that his grief over the loss of her would wane, but he had been sorely wrong. There were days when he became so engrossed in his work that he forgot about her for a little while, but nothing stopped him from thinking about her when he was in bed and waiting for sleep. Some nights he would shatter completely, burying his face in his pillow and sobbing as he thought never-endingly of what life would be like if he had just plucked up the courage to tell her he loved her all those years ago. He thought about her smile, sweeter than honey, and her large, round eyes, that seemed to constantly change from lavender to sky blue to silver-gray. He thought of her hair, which had always looked so thick and soft to him, and which had brushed against him once when she walked past him in the Great Hall, and how he had shuddered with involuntary pleasure at its soft ends tickled his neck.

He kept in correspondence with Harry, Hermione, Ron, Seamus, Dean and Ginny, but he had not seen any of them since the wedding. He noticed that their letters had taken on a note of worry, especially Ginny, who blatantly asked him many times why he had shut himself up in the castle and refused to meet with them on holidays. Hermione, however, seemed to understand, and therefore did not mention it. Hermione had seen the way Neville had looked at Luna in school, and at her wedding, and Hermione was aware of Neville's inability to run the risk of bumping into Luna Scamander should she, too, visit their friends on holiday.

Luna Scamander_._ The name tasted wrong on his tongue. It did not suit her at all. It was long, and awkward, and difficult to say. Her old name, Lovegood, had been perfect. So perfect, Neville thought, that he would probably want her to keep her maiden name, if he had been the one to marry her (although Neville had, indeed, often muttered the name _Luna Longbottom _to himself many times and agreed that it sounded quite sweet).

For many months, he stopped writing to his friends, and in turn, their letters stopped as well (though Ginny persisted for quite a while). A few weeks after he turned twenty-one, an owl came for him with a letter from Hermione. It was brief, but devoid of any unnecessary information. It only read:

_Neville,_

_Luna gave birth to twin boys on August 14__th__, a few days ago. She's named them Lorcan and Lysander. They both have her eyes. I thought you should know. _

_Hermione_

Neville wanted to rip the letter apart, but refrained. This was _good_ news, he told himself, and it would be terribly wrong of him to treat it as anything but. He wondered if Hermione had sent him the news because she believed he owed it to Luna to celebrate her new motherhood. He suddenly felt horribly guilty for not writing to Luna, and for having missed her pregnancy altogether. But he did not think he could stand amongst her other friends and bite his tongue as they cooed over her twins. He couldn't look on as she looked adoringly at her children, the children who she had had by another man, who were undoubtedly just as perfect as their parents. _They both have her eyes._ He closed his eyes for a moment and pictured Luna's eyes, wide and pale and gorgeous. He imagined the eyes of her sons staring back at her as they gave her great, toothless smiles. He could not stand to see it; he would surely make a scene or become angry if he were to do so. He could not watch her husband kiss her on the cheek, couldn't bear to see her so happy with someone else.

Did that make him selfish? Yes, he supposed it did. _Incredibly_ selfish, even. Neville sighed, reaching for parchment on his desk. The _least_ he could do, he supposed, was write Luna a letter of congratulations. He wracked his brains for a moment, then decided on how he would address it: "_To_ _My Old Friend Luna..."_

x-x-x-x-x-x

It was five months since he had sent Luna the letter. She had responded enthusiastically with a two-page reply containing various information about her children's looks, behaviours and, as she excitedly reported, their ability to sense Nargles. _"They swat at them with their fists. Oh, I was worried for a while that they would not be able to see them as I can, but they do!"_

In the note's last paragraph, Luna barraged Neville with questions about Hogwarts, his job, and which plants he was currently studying. Luna had never been bored by Neville's interest in Herbology—in fact, she had always listened to him with rapt attention. It was one of the things about her that inspired such great affection in him.

The note had also contained a small photograph of Luna with her children (Neville was selfishly pleased to see that Rolf was absent in the picture). Luna looked radiant, her hair loose like a shimmering curtain; her sons were as perfect as Neville had pictured them to be, small and plump with wide, pale eyes. They had both already begun growing messy crops of blonde hair that was a few shades darker than their mother's. The babies shook their fists and giggled and pulled on their mother's long hair, and Luna laughed affectionately and threw a gorgeous smile directly at Neville.

Neville's heart screamed as he stared at the picture, and for the first time he realized exactly how deeply he had fallen in love with Luna Lovegood. He felt the most desperate, piercing desire for those to be _his_ children, for her to be _his_ wife, for _them_ to be in love. It was pathetic, and useless, but Neville could hardly help it. He realized how perfectly in place she looked, sitting in a swamp-green armchair with her lovely little babies in her arms. If those had been his children, they would probably not be so pretty. Neville's looks would surely mix badly with Luna's, and his kids would probably end up with the large feet and horribly crooked teeth he hadn't been able to fix until he was eighteen years old.

He had written back to her with all kinds of encouragement and endearments, and once he sent the letter, he waited patiently for a week for her letter to arrive.

A week became two, then three, then five, and after five whole months Neville stopped waiting for an answer. Luna had obviously forgotten about him. Neville could hardly say he was surprised.

x-x-x-x-x-x

Six months after Neville had sent Luna the letter that was never answered, he was sitting in his quarters, going over more of Professor Sprout's paperwork. As he was sipping on mulled mead, there was suddenly a rapping on his door. Neville noticed, puzzled, how whomever was knocking had made a point to do it in a very ordered, almost _musical_ way. He crossed his office and peered through his peephole, only to find, frustratingly, that Filch had doused the lights in the hallway and he couldn't see a thing.

Neville pulled the door open, ready to reprimand whatever student, co-worker or whoever had decided to disturb him, and found himself completely floored instead.

Luna. Luna Lovegood Scamander was standing on the threshold of his office. His brain couldn't grasp, couldn't process the fact of it. But what else could he make of it? Perhaps he was hallucinating, or perhaps he was dead. Maybe he'd fallen from the stairs an hour ago and he was trapped in some kind of fantastical limbo where Luna Lovegood sought him out for visits.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and he was immediately arrested by the sound of that voice, as airy and feather-light as he remembered. "I would have sent an owl, but..."

Luna paused, shaking her head of silver-blonde hair. Neville noticed that her hair was in a long, tight braid, like it had been at her wedding. Her eyes were weary, and her lips shook.

Neville admitted her inside wordlessly, his eyes falling to the floor. He calmly shut the door behind her and turned the lock, thinking that if anyone, _anyone_, were to interrupt this moment, he wouldn't have been able to bear it.

He briefly noted that in addition to her tame hairstyle, she wasn't wearing a single spot of jewellery save her wedding ring, which winked at him when it caught the light. Her clothes, too, were suspiciously ordinary. She wore a very plain butter-coloured dress and black shoes, and her pea coat was a sorrel brown. It seemed peculiar to Neville—with the exception of Luna's wedding, he had never before seen her in an outfit that didn't have at least three different clashing colours at once.

Ignoring this bizarre but admittedly minor detail, Neville decided to ask the questions at the forefront of his mind.

"Luna, what are you doing here?"

She did not lift her gaze from the floor. She wrung her hands nervously, as if she were scared.

"I wanted to see you, I"—Luna sputtered clumsily before breaking off completely with a miserable sigh. She sounded like someone who did not understand their own reasons for doing what they do.

"You've got twins to take care of, don't you?" Neville snapped, sounding more annoyed than he had intended to.

"I—yes."

"And a husband?"

Luna's eyes widened for the briefest moment before she nodded in assent.

"Then what business could you possibly have with me?" Neville demanded. He didn't know why he was being so harsh with her—for some reason, he suddenly felt like she deserved it, for having married someone else and forgotten about him.

Luna's eyes fell to the floor again, and her hair fell in front of her brow, hiding her face from him.

"I'm sorry," she sniffed, and Neville was horrified when he recognized tears in her voice. "I'm so sorry. I never meant to bother you."

Luna only managed to make a single step towards the door before Neville grabbed her forearm and steered her back to him.

"Please don't cry," he said softly, suddenly feeling as if he were in his fifth year again, comforting her after the incident in the Department of Mysteries. She had only been fourteen then, and he could still remember the red lines on her neck made by Fenrir Greyback while he had been restraining her...

Luna whirled around, her braid spinning, so her back was to Neville. She had folded her arms across her chest and was looking out the window.

"Rolf didn't let me."

Neville blinked. "Sorry?"

"That's why I didn't write you back. And that's why I was never able to write you very much after he proposed to me. He told me not to."

Neville's mind was already racing with ideas, both angry and excited, but he asked the question anyway. "Why would he do that?"

Luna's small shoulders shrugged. "He doesn't like me talking to other men. Well, he's alright with Harry and Ron, but they're engaged and all, you know? When I met Rolf, I told him about you, and how you were a very dear friend of mine, and once we became engaged he told me that to be his wife, I couldn't write to you any longer."

Neville felt an uncharacteristic surge of rage fly up his throat like vomit. "Him over me, then?" he spat.

Luna turned around, and Neville's body stilled when he realized there were wet stripes painting her cheeks. She had turned away so he would not see her cry.

"I love him, I _do_," she said softly, almost as if she were afraid of being overheard. "But I am afraid of him. I came here to see you, and to be away from him for a little while. I've missed you so, _so_ much, Neville."

"What do you mean, you're afraid of him?" Neville asked urgently, getting right to the point he was immediately most concerned about.

Luna's eyes fell again, letting him see her wet, sooty lashes. "Rolf is...passionate. But his family is very traditional. He says I have to fit in with his female relatives in order to be his wife, so he dresses me properly and his mother braids my hair."

"He _dresses_ you?" Neville repeated incredulously.

Luna gave one stiff nod. "I don't mind that part, so much. He's taught me German, as well. But the reason I am afraid of Rolf is because I seem to displease him every day, and he becomes very angry with me, and I know that if I make him angry enough he will make me leave."

Neville couldn't wrap his head around what she was saying. It sounded like Luna Lovegood Scamander, with her perfect husband and perfect children, was unhappy, and was confiding in _him_ about it.

"Luna, why would you ever let him treat you like that?" Neville asked, horrified.

Luna blinked, looking puzzled. "What d'you mean, Neville?"

"You shouldn't be with someone like that," he said passionately, taking hold of her shoulders and shaking her a little. "It's not—it's not _healthy_! Luna, why'd you marry him if you knew he was like this?"

The next words she spoke completely floored him.

"Because no one else would have me."

At once, Neville's arms went slack. His hands slid from her shoulders, and he stared at her, uncomprehendingly. Somewhere in his stomach, a stone rolled over on itself, making him feel like he desperately needed to sit down.

"What?" Neville whispered, looking at her as if he had never seen her before in his life.

"Rolf is the only person who's ever loved me, 'sides my Dad," Luna said with a dainty shrug. She wiped her remaining tears with her coat sleeve and quietly cleared her throat. "And I suppose he's the best I could have done, anyway. It's better than being alone."

Neville stared at her disbelievingly, as if, somehow, he could silently communicate to her that _he_, Neville Longbottom, had been miserably in love with her for seven years.

"That's not true," he said quietly.

"No, Neville, I'm quite alright with it—really. I've come to terms with those facts," she said softly, smiling weakly. "I know that it's the polite thing to do, but you needn't lie to make me feel better. I know what everyone thought of me at Hogwarts, and I know that no one asked me to the Yule Ball, and that no one ever wanted to be my Valentine. I understand why and I'm not upset, because I found someone who wants to keep me."

"Yeah, keep you under his _control_!" Neville shouted, taking a step towards her and throwing her a look that contained all the anger, all the misery, and every other raw, unyielding feeling that swam around in his chest. He took hold of both her hands and held them up for her to see. "Luna, what the _hell_ is wrong with you? Can't you see what you've _done_?"

Her lip quivered, and her eyes were wide as dinner plates with shock. "Neville..." she broke off, utterly speechless.

"I was waiting!" he shouted wildly, stupidly. "I was waiting for you so I could"—

Luna's breath hitched in her throat, and she screwed her eyes shut, as though it would somehow make the situation disappear. Neville paused, suddenly fearing her displeasure.

"I'm...sorry. I'm sorry, Luna, I didn't mean to"—

"This is bad," she mumbled suddenly, shaking her head, her eyes still tightly shut. "Oh, I'm a very, very bad person—I-I shouldn't have come. Sh-shouldn't have come..."

Luna gently pulled their hands apart and began to move quickly towards the door. Stunned, Neville watched her in utter disbelief, his body buzzing with the adrenaline of what he had just been about to tell her.

Luna paused on the doorstep. She turned around, her cheeks flushed.

"I'm staying in Hogsmeade," she whispered. "Tomorrow night...find me in the Hog's Head. I'd like to talk with you then."

With that, the door swung shut, and Neville was alone again.

x-x-x-x-x-x

**Next chapter soon, guys. Remember, this is a mature-rated fanfiction, so there will be mature content on the way. If you're offended by that, then, well, sod off. Oh, and by the way, good reviews really do make my day. Some nice, long critiques of my writing would be well-appreciated! (And, perhaps, even rewarded with a lightning-fast update.)**


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